Sinner seals QF spot with another Beijing comeback

p a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/jannik-sinner/s0ag/overview'Jannik Sinner/a’s steely resilience has been on full display so far this week at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/beijing/747/overview'China Open/a. /p

p The No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings on Saturday notched his second consecutive comeback win at this year’s edition of the ATP 500 in Beijing. Sinner rallied past a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/roman-safiullin/sx50/overview'Roman Safiullin/a 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 to maintain his record of having reached at least the quarter-finals at every tour-level event he has played in 2024. /p

p After coming from a set down to oust a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/nicolas-jarry/j551/overview'Nicolas Jarry/a in the opening round, Sinner again found himself in trouble in the Chinese capital after the free-hitting Safiullin broke serve twice en route to the opening set. Yet the top seed responded emphatically to seal a two-hour, 22-minute triumph on the Capital Group Diamond Court. /p

p “A tough match. He’s an incredible player and we always have tough battles,” said Sinner. “This was our third encounter, so we know each other a bit. He returns very well, and he was serving well at important moments. So I tried to keep up mentally, which today was very tough. /p

p “Especially on these kinds of days, when maybe you don’t feel at your 100 per cent, to find a way through means so much to me. He’s an incredible player, so I knew I had to raise my level when it counted.” /p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"Comeback complete ✔️a href="https://twitter.com/janniksin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@janniksin/a advances into the quarter-finals at a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ChinaOpen?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#ChinaOpen/a ⚡️a href="https://twitter.com/ChinaOpen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@ChinaOpen/a a href="https://t.co/9tQ7bGQv5c"pic.twitter.com/9tQ7bGQv5c/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1839962420317401411?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"September 28, 2024/a/blockquote script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

p Sinner’s raw power and consistency from the baseline gradually wore down his opponent, and the Italian won seven straight games from 2-2 in the second set to take control of the second-round encounter. Sinner finished the match having converted four of 13 break points he earned against Safiullin, according to Infosys ATP Stats. /p

p With his 57th tour-level triumph of 2024, Sinner tied a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/alexander-zverev/z355/overview'Alexander Zverev/a for the most victories this season. The next challenge for the Italian in Beijing will be a last-eight meeting with a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/jiri-lehecka/l0bv/overview'Jiri Lehecka/a, who earlier overcame a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/roberto-bautista-agut/bd06/overview'Roberto Bautista Agut/a 3-6, 6-2, 6-1. /p

p Saturday’s victory was another small step towards becoming ATP Year-End No. 1 presented by PIF for Sinner. He is the runaway leader in the PIF ATP Live Race To Turin, in which his current advantage over second-placed Zverev stands at 2,985 points. /p

p [NEWSLETTER FORM] /p